1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an operation device for a user to designate various types of processing such as photocopy, facsimile, scanning, and image filing, and multifunction peripherals which perform various types of processing based on user's designated set contents.
2. Description of the Related Art
Heretofore, in multifunction peripherals having a plurality of functions such as a photocopy function, a facsimile function, a scanner function, a printer function, and an image filing function, there is disposed an operation panel for a user to perform various settings. However, in the conventional operation panel, an operation to perform various types of settings is complicated or is not easy to understand in some case. For example, the multifunction peripherals have a function (template function) of registering specific set contents beforehand as a template, and calling set contents stored as the template in response to user's instruction.
The conventional multifunction peripherals are provided with one template key for shifting to the template function in many cases. In such multifunction peripherals, the template function can be performed in a case where the template key is indicated by the user. That is, in the conventional multifunction peripherals, after indicating the template key, there has to be selectively performed an operation to register the present set contents as the template or an operation to call the set contents registered as the template in many cases.
However, the multifunction peripherals have a problem that it is not easy to see operability after shifting to the template function or an operation timing to shift to the template function. Especially, it is not easy to see an operation timing for shifting to a mode allowing the user who performs various settings to register the set contents as the template in a case where the set contents are registered as the template. In this case, there is another problem that an operation is complicated which checks the present set contents before they are registered as the template. Owing to the above-described problems, in actual, the template function is not effectively utilized in the conventional multifunction peripherals, and any efficient operation is not performed in many cases.